Rearing Monarchs #32
Approaching the First Blessing, part 3
Unification Thoughts, February 2024
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
Welcome back! I hope you’ve had fine holidays and the New Year. To start it off, we’ll continue with the essential theme we’d been looking into at last year’s close: the Heart of God. Because, as the title of this and the previous two articles states, that’s a young person’s key to approaching the first blessing. And since that blessing is the foundation for the other two, it’s important for a young person to become intentional about it throughout their growth period—it’s the path that leads toward attaining the very purpose of life.
As we’d mentioned before, the Principle explains how to attain the first blessing:
The key to God’s first blessing is (that)…mind and body (must) become one…with God as their center. …Such individuals…experience the Heart of God as if it were their own.
• Exposition of the Divine Principle, Creation 3.2, p. 34
And how that comes about was indicated in this earlier passage in the Principle:
Can we ever grasp the Heart of God? The new expression of truth should be able to reveal the Heart of God: His heart of joy at the time of creation; the broken heart He felt when humankind, His children whom He could not abandon, rebelled against Him; and His heart of striving to save them throughout the long course of history.
• Exposition of the Divine Principle, Introduction, p. 8
Unification Thought’s Theory of Education restates and clarifies this:
God’s heart has been expressed in three ways during the process of creation and the dispensation of restoration. These three forms of God’s heart are His heart of hope, His heart of sorrow, and His heart of pain.
• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 250
The Principle introduces God’s Heart
Unification Thought explains that these three hearts correspond respectively to the Principle of Creation, the Human Fall, and the History of Restoration and that they can be addressed through three corresponding forms of education. It then explains each of the three forms in ways that reveal the powerful emotional narrative underlying these sections in the Principle. Through that specific focus, a child can begin to understand the Heart of God. It was that realization that transformed my own relationship with the Divine Principle. (I’d previously shared a memorable personal experience about that here.)
Unification Thought suggests other ways of introducing God’s Heart: “Teachers and parents…can teach them through TV, radio, movies, videos, novels, plays, paintings, and various other means of communication.” (Unification Thought Theory of Education, p. 257)
Practice follows earnest study
That first introduction should then be supported by practice. Unification Thought explains:
It is necessary not only to teach God’s Heart through words, but especially to manifest it directly…. Parents must always love their children with a warm and sincere heart. …The same thing can be said of school education. Teachers must express the true love of God through their words and actions. …since school education is basically an extension of family education, teachers must guide their students wholeheartedly, and with a parental heart, regarding them as their own children. …This is an education of heart through one’s practice in the family and in the school.
• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 257–258
So this month, we’ll look into this “third heart” of God. The most recent textbook calls it the “heart of pain” (New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 250). But an earlier textbook states:
…(restoration) has been a very painful path. (God) has continuously suffered throughout all…of human history—a piteous God. The Heart of God during the providence of restoration, therefore, can be called “the Heart of pain and suffering”.
• Explaining Unification Thought, p. 223
Father Moon has spoken about God’s Heart during the history of restoration many times. (In the 2006 Cheon Seong Gyeong, there’s a section entitled The bitter pain of restoration and God’s 6,000-year search for His children. In the 2014 edition of that book, Chapter 4, Section 1 is entitled God’s Sorrow and the Providence of Restoration. And further down the page, in Section 2, there’s an entire discussion entitled God’s course in the providential history of restoration.) But here’s just one passage that I found particularly forceful:
Christians say that God is the glorious judge who consigns people to hell or to the kingdom of heaven. Yet in fact God is the most miserable being in the world. When the Fall turned the brilliance of heaven and earth into the darkness of hell, God went through the most unimaginable and bitter pain. It was as though God Himself plummeted into hell. Yet when He opened His eyes, came back to consciousness and regained His composure, He became intent on recovering His children who had died. (232-114, 1992.07.03)
• Cheon Seong Gyeong, 2014, Book 1, Chp 4, §1
This extraordinary description reminded me of a particularly tragic scene in a movie. (Regrettably, I can’t recall its name, nor have I been able to locate it.) In it, a young mother was in conversation on the sidewalk when her little daughter slipped between some parked cars and walked into the street, just as a car was passing. By the time the driver hit the brakes, it was too late and the mother screamed in horror as her child was run over…. So when Father Moon describes that God lost consciousness from shock and, when He could see again, He momentarily lost composure, I was brought to the threshold of a different understanding of God’s Heart of “pain and suffering”.
This third heart and children
There’s another thing. I found a surprising statement in Unification Thought about this third Heart of God:
Through an education of heart, children should come to understand the three kinds of God’s heart as described above, especially the heart of God in the course of the providence of restoration.
• New Essentials of Unification Thought, p. 253
At first, this bewildered and upset me. I couldn’t understand why an innocent blessed child, of any generation, would need this knowledge. I wondered why the powerful, ideal love in the original Creation wasn’t sufficient for a young child’s understanding. But as I studied Unification Thought’s Theory of Education, and through its lens I remembered so many of the things Father Moon explained about God, I realized the unfortunate truth of this statement: If there hadn’t been a Human Fall and the emergence of hell, there would indeed be nothing else to know than the infinite love behind and within the original created world. But in the universe after the Fall, a young person cannot fully understand the Heart of Heavenly Parent if he or she is kept ignorant of this heart of pain and suffering.
And that’s why knowledge of this “third heart” of God is so critical. Knowing it could deepen their concern for God’s heart and provide the power to resist and overcome the challenges of a difficult path. And note the important way the statement is phrased: “…a child should come to understand…”. In other words, it’s not something to be fully loaded onto the soul of an infant. Rather, it’s a more mature understanding that they can gradually be introduced to, starting at an appropriate time in their growth period.
Unification Thought’s focused take on the History of Restoration
That said, we can begin looking at Unification Thought’s remarkable summary of the Heart of God during the history of restoration.
You might recall that the Principle’s account of the stories of three Biblical families—Adam’s, Noah’s and Abraham’s—and then of Moses and Jesus, cover nearly 100 pages (pages 189–287). And that’s because each account is dense with intricately detailed explanations of unusual events, their symbolism, and the historical consequences of successes and failures.
Due to that enormous detail, weekend workshops or summer programs must greatly simplify or even omit those chapters. The result is that most young people have either never heard, or they simply can’t remember, those chapters. And very often they have no foundation in the Bible. And so, they’ve never wondered about those stories and the significance and importance of the events in them.
But in Unification Thought’s Theory of Education, the first and most essential form of education is an Education of Heart. And what that specifically means is the education of a child to understand the Heart of God. On that foundation, an education of Morality and Ethics, and then an education of Creativity are built. Those three forms of education correspond respectively to the First, Second and Third Blessings.
In November, we had read about God’s Heart of hope and joy; in December, we had done a reading on God’s Heart of sorrow and grief; and this February, we will do a reading on God’s heart of pain and suffering. Please don’t read it hurriedly. It’s not 100 pages as it is in the Principle, it’s just two letter-sized pages. And it focuses solely on the emotional narrative of the three families, Moses and Jesus. When you’re ready, please click here.